Union supplies of certain fishery products currently depend on imports from third countries. In recent decades, the Union has become more dependent on imports to meet its demand for fishery products. In order to ensure that the Union’s production of fishery products is not jeopardised and that there is an adequate supply of fishery products to its processing industry, import duties should be suspended or reduced for a number of fishery products within tariff quotas of an appropriate volume. To ensure fair competition between imported fishery products and Union fishery products on the Union market, the impact of the measures on the competitiveness of Union fish producers, should also be taken into consideration.

Council Regulation (EU) 2018/19771 opened and provided for the management of autonomous Union tariff quotas for certain fishery products for the 2019–2020 period. Given that the period of application of that Regulation expires on 31 December 2020, a new regulation providing for tariff quotas should be adopted for the 2021–2023 period.

All Union importers should benefit from equal and uninterrupted access to the tariff quotas provided for in this Regulation, and the rates set out for the tariff quotas should be applied without interruption to all imports of the fishery products concerned into all Member States until the tariff quotas have been used up.

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2015/24472 provides for a system of tariff-quota management, which follows the chronological order of the dates on which the custom declarations for release for free circulation were accepted. The tariff quotas opened by this Regulation should be managed by the Commission and the Member States in accordance with that system.

It is important to ensure transparency, predictability and legal certainty for all stakeholders. Since the tariff quotas are intended to ensure the adequate supply of fishery products to the Union’s processing industry, a minimum level of treatment or operation should be required for quota entitlement.

To ensure that the tariff quotas are managed in an efficient way, Member States should be allowed to draw from the tariff quota amount the necessary quantities corresponding to their actual imports. Since that method of management requires close cooperation between the Member States and the Commission, the Commission should be able to monitor the rate at which the tariff quotas are used up and should inform the Member States accordingly,